Sinclair B. Ferguson

And most of us forget more than we ever remember, it seems.

But it's interesting, isn't it, that events that transform our lives, events that shape our destiny or that change our future, even though we may not have thought too much about them at the time, are events that we remember forever.

And I suppose most of us can point back perhaps even to a single moment, a single hour, an experience, somebody we met that has radically changed the direction of our future lives.

Often at the beginning of the new year, I think about the experience that the prophet Isaiah had in this connection.

If you imagined all the prophets before Jesus climbing a mountain to look over the summit and to see the coming of the Lord Jesus, then John the Baptist would be the man standing on the summit, wouldn't he?

But I rather suspect the man standing just behind him would be the prophet Isaiah, straining his neck out to see who the suffering servant of his 53rd chapter really was.

And God prepared him for that ministry very early on in his career.

If you're familiar with the ministry of Ligonier over the years, there are two passages in the Bible that you think of instinctively.

One is Romans 12, 1 to 2, which speaks about us being transformed by the renewing of our minds.

And an even more fundamental one is probably Isaiah chapter 6, the great biblical chapter on the holiness of God.

Isaiah's encounter with God and the manifestation of God's holy majesty, the Holy, Holy, Holy One.

Isaiah never forgot that year.

It was the year that King Uzziah died.

It was a year of sadness for the people, but it was a new year that shaped every year of Isaiah's future life and indeed every single day that he lived from that point onwards.

Yesterday we were thinking about the fact that sometimes you might be reluctant to wish someone a happy new year when you know that people can't really be happy unless they are holy.

And I think it was Isaiah's encounter with God that made him realize he could never be truly happy until he was really holy.

And for that reason, if you read through the rest of his prophecy, you'll notice that his favorite description for the Lord becomes the Holy One.

So many things to learn from Isaiah chapter 6.

One of them is how to respond to God.

And you've probably noticed that Isaiah's response seems to have been three-dimensional.